


Kiss With a Fist

by afterbaedeker



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-12-03 05:23:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterbaedeker/pseuds/afterbaedeker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nicky Gold, former lightweight boxer and trainer of welterweight champion Jimmy Charming hasn’t so much retired from the world of boxing, as much as he’s retired from living. </p><p>Belle French needs someone to teach her to defend herself, and she wants to learn from the best, even if Nicky Gold’s best has seen better days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kiss With a Fist

Gold’s Gym is nestled between two modern brick structures on the backstreets of Storybrooke, Maine. The weatherboarding of the compact, two-storey walk-up has faded to a mottled aquamarine with years of neglect and exposure to the worst of the elements. Strips of paint continue to peel away from the planks exposing the bare wood beneath. The windows are papered from the inside with yellowed newsprint, the gold lettering running horizontally down the external side of the window has chipped away, fleck by fleck, the edges of some letters curling in on itself like a self-devouring serpent. It is generally assumed that the building is abandoned given its state of disrepair. The sign permanently affixed to ‘closed’ at its entrance perpetuates the facade. 

Belle French knows better. She is quite aware the gym is no longer the vibrant training centre it once was, but not open is not the same as closed. Formerly it was home to boxers of all ages and skill sets, raging from young children, too young to bout in the ring but eager to master the skills of the speed bags, to grown women and men training to be champions.

Those days have faded to nothing more than small town legend.

At the heart of the legend is Nicky Gold. Gold was a champion in his own right in the mid 80s, a wiry competitor that started off as a bantamweight as a teen fighting in Glasgow, gradually bulking up and competing as an amateur featherweight in the European circuit, who went on to make a tidy career as a professional lightweight in the American competitions. In his prime he was lean, lithe and nothing but sinew and speed. _Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee._ Gold never moved quite so dreamily as Ali, but he did glide. He would skate across the mat of the ring like Gene Kelly stepping across the stage ready to effortlessly guide Cyd Charisse around and around and around. 

Gold retired in the early 90s at the relatively early age of thirty-three, an especially young age for someone continuing to compete and win more than he lost. He shifted into the world of training and mentored several champions; the most famous was Jimmy Charming. Gold took Jimmy from an eager boy with a face too pretty to be punched, to a welterweight champion reminiscent of a young Sugar Ray Robinson. 

Those days have faded even further in the town’s collective memory and are nothing more than snatches of half remembered times.

Belle ignores the shut door and the sign that says 'closed' and reaches for the doorknob with a half-conjured confidence, willing it to open at her turning. She has walked past this building too many times to count and almost always she has spotted movement inside. Not very much and not for very long, but enough for her to _know_ that someone continues to go to Gold’s Gym and she very much suspects that it is Gold himself.

Her father is watching her from across the street. His hands grip the steering wheel and he tries and fails to look nonchalantly in Belle’s direction, but subtlety is not Moe French’s forte, and concern is writ all over his face, plain for all to see.

The doorknob twists in Belle’s hand. Belle releases the breath she did not realise she was holding when the door pushes inward without any undue influence. As Belle steps inside the building, one hand still on the door handle, she turns to look at her dad over her shoulder and gives him a reassuring wave. Moe nods his head in a short bob of acknowledgment and Belle imagines he gruffly grunts his surprise that she’s made it this far. 

The entry of the gym is dark and bare. What was once a reception area is now no more than a dust covered counter and empty chairs. Belle moves to the heavy flaps of clouded plastic that separates the entrance to the main training space, and pushes her way through. Dust motes flitter amongst the random beams of sunlight that strain through partially uncovered windows. The room smells faintly of disinfectant and stale sweat.

There are heavy drop bags hanging from exposed overhead beams in the corners of the room while speed bags are set up at various heights scattered around the room. The ring in the centre of the room dominates the space. The mat is scuffed, the ropes sag, and like the rest of the interior, there is an unused griminess that mars its features.

“Hello?” Belle calls out to the empty room, slowly turning on the spot to survey the space, looking for an unsearched room that might be hiding who she seeks. She spies an office atop a circular staircase at the other end of floor and begins in that direction.

Belle has taken no more than a dozen steps when a wiry man stumbles out from the office, flinging the door back with unnecessary force. A loud wooden crack reverberates around the space. The man moves to the railing at the top of the staircase to peer down at the intruder, his hands grip the rail tightly, as he rocks backward and forward ever so slightly, his weight shifting from the heel to the ball of his foot, the motion is continuous. Despite the smallness of the movement Belle is mesmerised by its constancy. _He moves like a metronome._

“Are you Mr Gold?” Belle looks up at the dishevelled man. Her vantage is not great, but she can see his untucked shirt and unbuttoned vest over stained jeans, the unwashed hair hanging limp and brushing the nape of his neck, and that shaving is a novelty he no longer indulges.

“Trouble reading, dearie?” he spits down at her. “The sign says ‘closed’.” His voice is thick and the Scottish brogue impenetrable enough that it partially masks the scotch-fuelled slurring of his speech.

“And yet the door was open, so…” she trails off, her hands make a broadly sweeping gesture, indicating the path from the door to where she stands now.

He scuttles down the staircase with surprising speed, his injured leg thumping heavily on each metal stair, his hands skimming the rails, propelling him, assisting him on his descent.

He staggers toward her – two uncomfortably unsteady steps – to confront her. With an unimposing frame of five foot seven Gold has never been of a stature to loom over someone, and although he would not claim to tower over her, he certainly feels large by comparison. It is an upending awareness, he feels as though someone is playing his lungs like an accordion, and his breathing is all mixed up. She is positively petite. 

“So you thought you’d take it upon yourself to indulge in some petty trespass. You don’t seem the vandalising type. Perhaps larceny? You’ll see there’s not much to steal.” Gold coughs out a mirthless laugh.

“I’ve come to ask a favour,” she replies, pointedly ignoring his absurd accusations.

“I don’t do favours.”

“Well, you don’t appear to be _doing_ much of anything,” she snaps.

“Dearie, that’s not encouraging me to make an exception.” His words are cross but his smirk suggests his interest is piqued.

“I’m sorry,” she hastily assures him, for she does not mean to speak so sharply, but she can only just manage to hold her tongue against her father’s near constant worry, and this surliness is more than she can stomach.

“It’s just, I came to ask if you would teach me to box. Teach me to defend myself,” Belle clarifies, because she does not want to fight for fitness or for money, but for her safety. “My father worries…” she hesitates to complete the thought. _Too much? Constantly? Unnecessarily?_ “About me,” she ends, a little lamely.

Something softens at the edges of Gold’s eyes, a slight crinkling of the skin that somehow expresses more with a crease of flesh than most men could manage with a mouthful of words. 

“Does he have cause to worry?” he asks, softly, seriously. He once knew what it was to be a father and what fears prey on their unbidden thoughts.

“Not as much as he does,” she suggests, her head proudly upturned, awaiting his reply. Her father worries more than Belle, and, she regularly argues, he worries more than he should, but his worry is not without cause.

Gold gently grips her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her head infinitesimally from side to side. Her jaw clenches at his touch, but she says nothing, does nothing to remove herself from his light grasp. His touch is enough to expose the deep pink scar that runs along the underside of her jaw, from the pulse point beneath her right ear to her chin. At the start and end of the scar the skin puckers a mottled purple.

“This is why you want to learn to defend yourself,” he says flatly. The wound is newly healing, only a matter of weeks since stiches would have been sewn and plucked from her face.

“It’s part of it,” she agrees.

“Have you ever boxed before?” he asks as he takes a step backwards to assess the woman before him, looking at her properly for the first time. Her posture is good; her head is held high and her shoulders are drawn back unlike so many young people with their stooping and slouching and gazes forever fixed at their feet. 

“No.”

“Have you ever trained for anything before? Dance class? Team sports?”

“Um, I used to swim. For my school.” 

“Were you disciplined?”

“Yes.” 

Although, thinking back, Belle supposed it was rather simple as a child to appear orderly when really it was just a matter of being well behaved. In all fairness it was really her dad that was disciplined, she simply followed his lead. The alarm may have been set for five a.m. but if, on the odd occasion, Belle ignored the electronic drone from her bedside table it always proved impossible to ignore her father’s mild morning routine of bringing her a banana and yoghurt smoothie to her bedroom door to coax her into action. When that would happen she would pretend she was just about to get up. Then it was always the same: she would ready herself for training and her dad would drive her to the swimming centre twenty minutes from their home. He would read the morning paper in the bleachers while she practiced dives and tumble turns and swam lap after lap and then they would drive home again, ready themselves for the day – school for her, work for him – and prepare to repeat the procedure every weekday of every school term for eight years. 

Belle supposes she kept the routine as long as she did because she was good at swimming, perhaps also because her father was so effusively proud of her commitment and her talent. Belle thinks back to the reassuring monotony of a routine like that and hopes training with Gold can give that not only to her, but her dad, too.

“So you can be instructed,” Gold determines, mostly for his own benefit. “That’s good.”

Belle nods her head, clearing the remembrances of her childhood, and focusing on the white-hot hope that he is seriously considering her request.

“And what do I get in exchange for your tuition?”

Belle looks at him blankly.

“Come now, dearie. No one comes to see me without a deal in mind.”

“Well, of course, I’ll _pay_ you.”

“I don’t find myself in need of money.” 

“Oh.” Belle was crestfallen; she had felt sure that he was going to agree to train her.

“But when two people want something the other has, a deal can always be struck.” 

“I’m not sure what else I have to offer.”

Gold considers the issue currently encouraging his increased scotch consumption, and asks, “Have you any experience with administrative tasks?”

Although Belle is surprised at the question she is happy to answer in the affirmative. “I manage my dad’s florist shop. That involves accounting, ordering, stocktake—“.

“Good, good,” Gold cuts her off, waving his hand dismissively at her list of responsibilities. “I have a small matter to resolve with the local council, which I grow weary of following-up. It seems there are certain “beautifying standards” my gym is currently violating. Perhaps you could review the notices I’ve been ignoring and let me know what needs to be done to make the matter go away.”

“Sure,” she agrees. “I could do that. I’ll, ah, fit it around my work at the shop.” 

“ _If_ I take you on,” he stresses the subjunctive, “you do what I say, without exception. I tell you to eat nothing but porridge for a week you do it. I tell you to run laps of the room, you run until I tell you stop. You quit and that’s it. There are no second chances.”

“I get it.” She beams at him, her eyes a startlingly bright cerulean blue that convey nothing but confidence in the man before her.

“If I’m going to train you, you train by my schedule. I’ll expect you to study technique twice a week for at least an hour. Three times a week you’ll practice here, each session will be 90 minutes. To start it will mostly be conditioning, but you’ll get to box soon enough.”

“We have a deal?” Belle cautiously sticks out her hand, ready to shake on it.

“We do.” His hand grasps hers for one brief, firm shake. The deal is struck.

“When can we start?”

“Come by tomorrow evening at six and we’ll take it from there.”

Belle smiles, her cheeks aching from the fullness of it. “Thank you,” she says not much louder than a whisper.

“You may not be thanking me for long, dearie,” Gold brushes aside her gratitude.

“All the more reason for me to say so now.”

Belle turns to leave but stops abruptly before her back is to him, she spins around to face him once more.

“I haven’t told you my name!” 

“It’s no matter.” He shrugs.

Belle laughs in disbelief. “It’s Belle. Belle French. I’ll see you tomorrow Mr Gold.”

**Author's Note:**

> The delightful daylilium issued the following call out on Tumblr (many months ago):  
> #he used to train boxing there  #he was the best and everyone went to him  #he trained lightweight champion james charming #but then a horrific accident left him without the use of his leg and in a bitter rage he closed the gym #until young isabelle french wants to learn self defence #and she wants to learn it from the best #who’s gonna take it  


End file.
